Everyone who bought into neoliberalism in the 80s is now experiencing economies that are mysteriously failing to thrive. Correlation isn't cause, except when it is.
>Everyone who bought into post-industrial "service-based" economies in the 80s is now experiencing economies that are mysteriously failing to thrive.
Fixed it for you. I don't understand how people expect "service-based" economies to actually create any long term wealth, growth or prosperity. Unless you're serving increasingly ever more lattes to each other, and increasingly more "banking-services" and rents upon rents somehow are supposed to "grow" the economy and create "prosperity".
The more you de-industrialize your country and outsource everything, to the point that you're failing to meet even your energy needs, and competency to quickly build plants or infrastructure projects dies out, it's bound to result in at best stagnation and going to the shitter eventually, it's a matter of time.
Go back to what the western world was doing in the 50’s. High tax and high public spending. In 1950 the US had a top marginal tax rate of 91%. The 50s were great, let’s do that again.
The NTU only goes back to the 1980s and does not actually include any analysis of the 1950s.
Looks like NTU also is positing their stance on the ideology that the 1% are the only ones that create jobs but they are the ones to most likely invest in large corporations. There seems no prospect to help the mom and pop shops or small companies that have stronger solutions beyond what large corporate tunnel vision provides.
My personal taxes keep going up with these "Tax Cuts". I don't expect them to come down with the push for tax cuts for the wealthy. Nor has my income gone up.
Wouldn't buying more local would reduce energy used for transportation of goods and services?
I see less Amazon purchases and deliveries as a net benefit for the majority and a net deficit for the wealthy investors. Wealth that stays more in the community versus being shipped to Wall Street.
The majority definitely benefits from being able to buy cheap Chinese goods and go on cheap Europe trips while $BIGCOMPANY vacuums up money from the rest of the world to prop up the USD. In which other country can a guy cutting hair (out of many examples) afford so many international vacations?
This sounds like you are applying shifting baseline syndrome. [0] [1] [2]
Another way to phrase shifting baseline is when people apply what they experience with an over weighted value. For example, the cost of living has skyrocketed in the USA compared to older generations, with the cost of a home, healthcare, and basic goods and services. Wages have been stagnant while the wealthy keep gaining more and more of economic power. Economic mobility is also quite low compared to 10 or 20 years ago.
Those trips are most likely more cost effective compared to the 1950s because the technology was new and still evolving. Air travel was a luxury and now it is a commodity. Engineers have improved the technology to craft air plains while finding ways to reduce production cost. Cost savings have not be pushed to the working class and are shifted to the wealthy.
If the wage increase of CEOs was linear with your wage. It would be higher and also be less of an economic for burden the masses.
People over value the rare lucky ones as being the average of all. Kind of how a number of Americans are against taxing the wealthy because they believe they are or will become wealthy. It is rare to become wealthy and often those that are lacking in empathy and morals. Just like my Uncle that worked for Arbys, which is a millionaire because he believes and supports the idea that those below him should not be payed a living wage.
At leas I learned from him that those franchises often run on debt because they try and pull out every last dollar into the owner's pockets. He was looking to become the owner but the debt was too great to buy in, as a millionaire.
Is there something intrinsic to the general setup of government spending in the 1950s that makes it incompatible with equal rights for minorities and women? These would seem to be orthogonal issues.
That environment was directly proceeded by WW2, which required massive capital investment to rebuild Europe[1]. In the UK we were still rationing candy and meat during the early 50s[2]. So, I’m not particularly eager to recreate those conditions.
The story of British Leyland is enough to scare anyone w/ even half a brain away from ever allowing British politicians to have even the least bit of influence over a company that competes anywhere near the consumer space.
You mean how it was successfully and profitably-run for over a decade part-nationalised, following its near-collapse as a private company?
Or how in the Thatcher era, the government began to privatise and divest the most valuable parts of the company (and arguably a huge amount of British soft power) for little return to the taxpayer?
Notably it sold Mini to BMW, Leyland to DAF, Jaguar and Land Rover to Ford.
Privately-run Ford nearly went bust in the 2000s and famously had to be bailed out by the US taxpayer, but they sold off Jaguar and Land Rover to Tata in the process.
successfully and profitably-run for over a decade part-nationalised,
"successful" and "profitably run", taking into consideration the recommendation to Tony Benn that the Wilson gov't provide 1.2 billion pound investment; plus the buyout of existing BL shareholders at 1/5 the value of their shares, plus the pre-existing tariff regime, without even touching the product and manufacturing issues that had dogged them since the Austin-Morris days.
Pigs can fly, if given enough thrust...Labor didn't fix BL, it just kept the shambolic structure upright, albeit canted at a weird angle.
Jaguar was privatized in '84 (and nobody at BL was going to pony up money for new models) and only in '90 did Ford purchase it, for as it turned out, way too much. "Nothing wrong with this that a bulldozer couldn't fix" said a Ford exec after first touring the Jaguar plant on Brown's Lane in Coventry.
Neither BMW nor Ford were ever able to make Land Rover work as a reliably profitable company.
Also, Ford was never bailed out in 2008. Alan Mullaly hocked almost all of the company to get liquidity before the crash, which was prescient.
After that, the entirety of the former Ford "Premier Automotive Group" (save for Lincoln) was jettisoned, as it was in the long term a money-loser. Jaguar and Land Rover to Tata, Volvo to Geely, and Aston-Martin to ...some Saudis.
But it was part-nationalised in 1974 following a private-sector failure. It was a big manufacturer, letting it collapse would have led to thousands of jobs lost, but the government went for a 1.2bn buyout instead of simply a cash injection.
It was not badly run in the ‘70s. It had its ups and downs, but ultimately it was very stable. It really started to collapse in the ‘80s. Lots of reasons for this, including a changing market, recession and poor management decisions. Toyota’s lean production processes became a thing and BL failed to evolve, such is the way of business. It was most certainly a mess by the late ‘80s.
Remember, it was part-nationalised: essentially run as a private corporation that the government had a major stake in, not directly run by the government, though of course the govt could not help but meddle and the Thatcher govt was ideologically opposed to such a structure existing.
>following a private-sector failure. It was a big manufacturer, letting it collapse would have led to thousands of jobs lost,
Those jobs are just as lost now, as they would've been 50 years ago. Wouldn't it have been better to fix that problem earlier?
>It was not badly run in the ‘70s.
I'm sorry, I can't credit that. BL was less efficient in 1973 in terms of cars per worker than Renault, Fiat & VW. Per sales, it was even worse, as Fiat wasn't selling Alfa Romeos, Maseratis and Ferraris at the time. To say nothing of Ford, or Toyota.
>It had its ups and downs, but ultimately it was very stable.
A tossed brick descends from its apogee at a steady 9.8m/s^2; and yet we don't call that flying.
>Remember, it was part-nationalised...the govt could not help but meddle and the >Thatcher govt was ideologically opposed to such a structure existing.
So, as best as I can figure, that £1.2 billion was recouped by:
1.) Privatization of Jaguar in '84: £400 million
2.) Sale of Rover group to British Aerospace in '87: £150 million
3.) Merger of Leyland Trucks w/ DAF in '88: unknown, the merged Leyland DAF went bankrupt four or five years later.
So, by '88, the Government was still out £400 million or so on its investment; how much longer do you think they should've kept it up?
Also-I'd love to know which Anglophone government has a record of success with:
1.) A fully nationalized company
2.) That is highly capital intensive
3.) In the consumer-product or durable-goods space
> So, by '88, the Government was still out £400 million or so on its investment
Only if you consider its book value as a measure of success, but the aim of public ownership is not just to buy an asset and make a direct profit on share price. Losing all those workers in one go would have been catastrophic for the economy, it would have had to have bailed out the company in some form if it didn't buy it.
BL secured a lot of well-paying jobs for people who pay tax in the UK AND was profitable for much of its tenure. As a major manufacturer, it strengthened exports, bolstered manufacturing expertise within the country and generated soft power. From the government's point of view, this is certainly worth more than the book value alone.
As I said, it was unable to evolve as a business, it languished, and would have needed more investment and modernisation. It happens to private businesses too. The directors and govt chose to sell off the best bits rather than invest or seek more investment.
I understand the business case for this, but I think it was short-sighted: the long-term loss of a major UK manufacturing industry and soft power brands has not been a good thing for the country, in my opinion.
> Also-I'd love to know which Anglophone government has a record of success with: 1.) A fully nationalized company 2.) That is highly capital intensive 3.) In the consumer-product or durable-goods space
Privatised transport and utilities in the UK have been a very obvious and dismal failure. There have been no successes, as far as I'm aware. They cheap out on paying for critical infrastructure. They have to keep getting bailed out by the government, which is much more inefficient use of taxpayer money, and the profits go to shareholders instead of the taxpayer.
British Rail, British Telecom, Thames Water Authority, Post Office... were they more profitable as government agencies? No. Were there examples of mismanagement? Sure. Did they provide better value to the public? Absolutely.
Nobody paid a 91% tax rate in practice. What a silly thing to focus on, a headline marginal tax rate nobody paid.
The 1950s were great for places like the US, Australia and New Zealand because they were initially fairly unregulated (wartime planning was ended and the market took over) and they weren't destroyed by the war.
The UK had rationing into the mid 50s while its empire crumbled. It was not some heavenly place. Millions left the UK for the new world, including my grandparents, because the UK was in a dire state.
Over the next 20-30 years, the anglosphere became progressively more regulated, more taxed, more controlled, and more unionised. You needed a licence to import a new car. You needed a licence to import magazines. Exchange rates and interest rates were controlled by the government and adjusted for political purposes. Large parts of the economy were run inefficiently by the state as make-work schemes to prop up "full employment" policies that were politically popular but very expensive. The oil shock of the 1970s revealed how bad this scheme of economic management was at responding to changing conditions. When you have thea biggest economy in the world and you were untouched by a war that decimated your competitors it is easy to look good. But the system was not capable of responding to changing conditions because it was largely driven from the top down by bureaucrats and politicians for the sake of implementing their preferred social policies and winning elections respectively.
In the 1980s, this came to a breaking point. This was true everywhere, but the clearest example is not the US or the UK but New Zealand. It nearly went bankrupt trying to maintain completely unsustainable exchange rates for political reasons and there was a small consitutional crisis when the outgoing government refused to implement the incoming government's instructions to lower the exchange rate. The economy was dominated by what were called "Think Big" schemes: government infrastructure projects that made no financial sense but looked good on election posters and "created jobs". Large numbers of businesses did entirely pointless things like assembling Japanese cars from components more expensively than could be done in Japan, because car imports were restricted. Many other examples exist. Agriculture was heavily subsidised by the state.
The new governments in the 1980s (I am talking about the West generally now) did away with much of this rubbish. They lowered trade barriers, reduced or eliminated subsidies, and privatised the elements of the public sector that had no reason to be run by the public sector.
Sometimes when privatised these businesses failed. But that wasn't because they were privatised, it was because they had never made any financial sense in the first place.
The fundamental point is that the 1950s system was the same as the 1960s and 1970s system. If you go back to the 1950s, you also go back to the 1970s. The system was the same, the same incentives would exist, and the result would be similar. Give the economy over to the public sector and in a few years all thought of making what customers want and will pay for is substituted with using economic power to achieve social goals and win elections. We had better make sure we hire more Xs, they deserve more representation, and we better put money into Y, people love to hear about Y, and so on. And before long it is a lumbering inefficient mess.
I mean I think most billionaires would welcome the 1950s tax code. The reduction in their bills would be amazing! The only people paying those number would be our new "middle" class doctors, lawyers, etc people who make a lot of income but limited investments.
I have zero doubts everyone commenting has read the article. That makes me even more surprised, that some people seem to have conclusions that are in direct opposition to what the article says.
Since, as we all know, the article is about how central planning ruined the UK economy, and the later reforms were not enough to fully unblock it. Particularly, it postulates deregulating housing and making it harder for people to oppose new investments (especially related energy and infrastructure)..
I have a lot of issues with the work of Yanis Varoufakis, but he has one idea that I'd like to see tried out - and that is that the workers own 10% of their companies, obviously getting 10% of the profit, etc. At least in Europe it's uncommon to get shares as part of the compensation package, so I'm curious how the Varoufakis' idea would end up working. It's worth giving it a shot.
Why would I want that as a worker? I am already "overexposed" to the fortunes of my employer by virtue of being employed by it. If my employer does well then I get paid better, get a bonus, etc. If my employer does poorly then I risk being laid off.
Why would I want to invest in that risk when I have relatively little control over the success of the business, as opposed to investing the same amount of wealth in the market more generally or in assets that counter some of that risk?
Also, generally, why should employees automatically get some part of the company? What have they done to deserve it?
As a worker, I don't want 10% of my business' volatile profit. I would rather have reliable cash, that I can invest in SP500. Or at least that is the case with employees of most businesses.
I'm not opposed to employee ownership but there's no reason to think that mandating a certain minimum level will produce better outcomes. The equity dilution will increase the cost of capital, making it harder to start or expand businesses. Most workers have virtually zero ability to impact shareholder returns. And low skilled workers really need cash today, not the possibility of dividends or capital gains tomorrow.
Central planning is likely going to be a feature of all manners of world-leading governments, whether we're talking about dictatorships, theocracies, or democratic republics. Imagine, for example, a country that wants to get into the chip game at this point.
As one of those people ... it's not so much that everything is (still) Thatcher's fault. Had she not won in 1979, doubtless the UK would be facing a different mix of problems, some the same, some different. But Thatcher set the ball in motion on the tracks it has been on more or less since her first win, and it is those tracks that are the fundamental source of many of the problems in the UK (not all of them, but the biggest ones).
Turns out Thatcherism only works as long as the state still has assets to sell off. The delusion that assets would stay in the hands of the working and middle class, and not end up with the wealthy inheriting class, has to be one of the biggest political failures of our government on the modern era. It's lead to the possible death of the Conservative Party if they fail to fight off Reform and the Liberal Democrats.
You're surely joking. The IMF isn't bailing out the UK, and there aren't 3 day week debates because of the failing power supply. What's led to the death of the Conservative party is them doing exactly the opposite what a lot of Conservative voters want: bigger economy, and slower immigration.
Regarding the immigration, sure, the Conservative voters maybe want less of it, but rich and influential Tories actually like immigration as it allows their businesses to thrive (even more). The UK has more capital going around than her own people.
We didn't leave the EHCR. So there is an argument that we don't have full control of our laws. IANAL and won't pretend to know the specifics.
> Regarding the immigration, sure, the Conservative voters maybe want less of it, but rich and influential Tories actually like immigration as it allows their businesses to thrive (even more).
Not just Conservative voters. Almost 1 in 5 Labour and Lib Dem voters want to see it reduced.
Generally 52% of the UK want to see it immigration reduced in some capacity according to the migration observatory. This was roughly the Vote Leave percentage.
The ECHR is an international agreement like many, many others. It has special status in UK law only because we chose to: that was the purpose of the Human Rights Act. You can also take complaints of breach to the European Court of Human Rights, but they have no enforcement powers (in particular, Russia often decided not to bother complying, and we've avoided enforcing their ruling on prisoner voting rights with their tacit consent).
It used to be the case that we were also tied into the ECHR (and playing nice with the rulings of the ECtHR) because it's required by EU law even though it's not an EU instrument and the ECtHR isn't an EU court. But as we've left that's no longer an issue.
Finally, I'd just say that there's little objectionable about the Convention, and for the most part it tracks very closely with existing British common law (not surprisingly, as it was a Churchill-supported project in the first place and intended to export what was great about the British tradition of liberty as much as to bind us into Europe). There are a few edge cases where politicians and certain newspapers get into enormous flaps about individual cases, but it's really not that constraining a convention: most of the clauses have get-outs for crime, morality and public order and the margin of appreciation is generally quite broad. It's not perfect any more than, say, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is, but the complaints are mostly grandstanding.
I know. I felt like it needed to be pointed out that even on parties that are seen to be more centre-left/left that there is good portion of voters that are opposition to immigration.
This is because I don't think it is as much of a right/left issue like it is frequently framed.
> The UK has more capital going around than her own people.
Wealth and income are not zero-sum. Generally, people produce more than they consume (or we'd all be living in caves). Reducing people reduces output, growth, and wealth.
Legal immigrants from the EU were not the only source of migrants to the UK. Many come from elsewhere, legally and otherwise. Guess what: we have Brexit but we still have immigrants - impossible?! </sarcasm>
Plus it was never about immigration, it was always - I think - a classic case of misinformation and greed from many places. Sadly many people fell for it.
> it was always - I think - a classic case of misinformation and greed from many places. Sadly many people fell for it.
Why do many people assume that if someone thinks differently about a particular political issue they must have fooled somehow? Considering there is data that partially contradicts your belief that it wasn't about immigration, maybe your assessment about their level of understanding of the issues involved is also incorrect.
> Why do many people assume that if someone thinks differently about a particular political issue they must have fooled somehow?
politicians sometimes lie…?
the £350 million a day bus springs to mind as one example. the amazing trade deals which will unleash our new economy were another.
like, those things sound great. people wanted those promises to become real and believed the people who were saying those things could implement them.
turns out implementation is sometimes a lot harder than waving your hands and making a bunch of promises.
edit —
especially when the advertised numbers are factually wrong, and people know they are wrong — i.e. they lied.
> A study by King's College London and Ipsos MORI, published in October 2018 found that 42 percent of people who had heard of the £350 million claim still believed it was true, whereas 36 percent thought it was false and 22 per cent were unsure.
That isn't a big enough reason to assume everyone's been fooled. Or at least, the people who disagree with you have been fooled. That's possible, but it's also possible you've been fooled. So bringing it up one-sided is a bit grating.
i’m going to post the quote above again, with more context from another quote, because you’ve avoided quoting the bit which actually demonstrates that this is a big enough reason to assume that enough people were fooled.
> On 27 May, the UK Statistics Authority chair Andrew Dilnot made a stronger statement against Vote Leave, stating that the continued use of the figure was "misleading and undermine[d] trust in official statistics".
misleading is politics speak for “lying with statistics”.
> A study by King's College London and Ipsos MORI, published in October 2018 found that 42 percent of people who had heard of the £350 million claim still believed it was true, whereas 36 percent thought it was false and 22 per cent were unsure.
two years later, after the claim was repeatedly denounced as being misleading and false multiple times, 42% of people surveyed still thought it was true.
that’s a significant representative proportion of the population, given 52% of people voted to leave.
it’s no wonder that 7 years later “brexit remorse” among leave voters is sitting pretty at around 60% or so (cba to source this, i think it was a yougov poll reported in the independent).
Most people are quite aware that politicians lie. It is a common trope in movies, tv and media generally. Politicians are quite disliked in the UK generally. So this idea that people blindly believe politicians is nonsense.
> A study by King's College London and Ipsos MORI, published in October 2018 found that 42 percent of people who had heard of the £350 million claim still believed it was true, whereas 36 percent thought it was false and 22 per cent were unsure.
So? People frequently cherry pick information to justify their decisions after they have already made them. I actually looked up the actual report (not the wikipedia summary). While much more people generally believe the 350 million figure voted Leave, there was a decent percentage of people that believed the figure and voted Remain.
People seem to forget that a good portion of the Media and Parliament (including the Prime Minister at the time who won with a majority) were in favour of Remain. What is often ignored is that if you look at UKIP voter percentage before the referendum. It had risen from 3.1% to 12.6%. That was rising well before the bus campaign was a thing.
The Leave Referendum was about many things. It was partly about immigration, it was partly about sticking it to an entitled political class, part of it was about sovereignty. Making it about a figure on the side of the bus is asinine. I also don't believe Dominic Cummings on how effective it was btw.
But in any event this will probably be my last comment on anything political on here because you get downvoted for simply defending half the people in my country that voted a particular way.
i find your comment weird. hopefully my reply clarifies why i find it weird. probably not. i’ve drunk too much coffee today.
> I actually looked up the actual report (not the wikipedia summary). While much more people generally believe the 350 million figure voted Leave, there was a decent percentage of people that believed the figure and voted Remain.
64% Con/65% Lab leave supporters versus 32% Con/20% Lab remain supporters. so, 65%-ish (hand wavy representative stat) of leave supporters believed the claim, which was misleading / false.
65% x 52% = 34% of all leave voters (very back of a napkin maths here). that’s a sizeable chunk of people who believed the lie. enough people to possibly swing the vote, given there was only 2% in it. that’s enough to swing it if there was no bus claim.
> The Leave Referendum was about many things. It was partly about immigration, it was partly about sticking it to an entitled political class, part of it was about sovereignty. Making it about a figure on the side of the bus is asinine.
i completely agree.
but the bus is a great example of how people get lied to by politicians, who then potentially get their 34% of people convinced. which was the point i was trying to make. politicians lying has a significant impact on the outcome. it’s not solely responsible, but it has an impact. they bear some responsibility for the shit show we currently have now.
interestingly, the ipsos mori / KCL study confirms this somewhat
> you get downvoted for simply defending half the people in my country that voted a particular way.
1) commenting about the voting on comments is something we try to avoid doing here. have a read of the site guidelines to understand why (you’re a new user so i don’t know if you’ve seen them before or not)
2) people on HN generally speaking tend to be pedantic nerds like me who are probably somewhat on the spectrum somewhere and when they see a claim will call people out on it when it is wrong.
> Leave voters are least likely to answer correctly (16%) and most likely to wrongly think that European immigrants contribute less than they take out (42%).
> Leave voters are most likely to hold these incorrect beliefs: European immigration has increased crime; decreased quality of healthcare services; increases unemployment among low-skilled workers.
^ ipsos mori/KCL study
there’s your problem. you’re aligned politically with people who are, to put it plainly, more wrong about this subject than they are right. so when you try and defend your position on here, you are going to get significant pushback on claims because, frankly, a lot of the claims made by other people who voted the way you did are either wrong or misleading when they make their claims.
3) i wasn’t on the site in 2016 (did HN exist then? who knows). imagine what it would have been like back then!
4) i hope you stick around. compared to some commentators, you’re doing a bang up job with actually reading studies (which meant i’ve gone and read the study and learned something now! thanks!).
> So this idea that people blindly believe politicians is nonsense.
bonus round. most people don’t believe politicians. they do, however, vote based on who the sun newspaper tells them to vote for (well, until recently).
There is in the section entitled "Preferences for different types of migrant: origin, similarity, skill level". (There doesn't seem to be a way to directly reference it in a document).
> Country of origin is not the only factor that people take into account when considering preferences on immigration. In the European Social Survey 2014, British respondents reported how many immigrants should be allowed based on a question that specified both the country of origin (Poland or India) and the skill level (professional or unskilled labourer). The results revealed that when migrants are professionals, opposition is low, and when migrants are unskilled, opposition is high (Figure 5). Research has shown that people’s general preference for high-skilled over low-skilled migrants is mainly driven by perceptions of their higher economic contribution
> The preference among the British public for highly skilled migrants aligns with previous research indicating that, when questioned about the criteria for incoming migrants, skills are considered more important than other factors such as race/ethnicity and religion.
My view is there needs to be a version of Godwin's law related to client of supposed 'racism', i.e. the one who claims ${issue} is caused by/related to 'racism' thereby loses the argument unless he comes with solid proof.
I see no proof, spurious claims of 'racism' do not count as such so it actually was about immigration.
It's disingenuous to pretend Brexit wasn't at least partially motivated by in-group preference. Almost as disingenuous as implying that there's anything wrong with having said preference. I don't open up my house to people I don't know regardless of their potential to contribute to it economically. Why is this treated as immoral when the same reasoning is applied to the immigration system?
I am not pretending anything. I've showed some actual evidence to back to back up my view point.
Moreover, time after time the British public are surveyed about their views on immigration and ethnic background is not something that is important to a large portion of the people taking part.
Are there some people that do care? Sure there are, but they are very small minority typically.
> Sure there are, but they are very small minority typically.
From your own data, 25% of respondents agreed with the statement: Allow none/only a few immigrants of a different race/ethnicity to come and live in [the UK]. This isn't a small minority and I can guarantee you the distribution of these attitudes isn't equal between leavers and remainers.
You have to read the analysis below as well as look at the charts. From the articles I linked
> As a further way of characterising countries, we include a second measure based on the percentage of people saying that immigration ‘makes the country a worse place to live’ On this measure, the UK maintains a similar rank position as one of the more positive countries in the sample, and similar to Switzerland at 18%.
> These two measures can be thought of as capturing opinions on future migration flows and current population stocks. In most of these 13 countries, it appears that people are more negative towards the idea of continuing flows than about the immigrants already present. Finland, for example, is a country where 42% of the public would prefer few/no immigrants of another race coming to live there, whilst, at the same time, just 19% think immigrants make the country a worse place to live.
It is still much better than many other countries in Europe.
> This isn't a small minority and I can guarantee you the distribution of these attitudes isn't equal between leavers and remainers.
Ok sure. I probably shouldn't have said minority. Yeah of course the distribution isn't going to be equal. However people pretend it was all about racism when it clearly wasn't.
The UK economy is already pretty small per-capita compared to other first-world countries. I'm certainly not one to argue for growth, but what is it about UK's conservatism that demands degrowth? It strikes me as antithetical to the liberalisation that I would think would form the right flank of the spectrum.
From my perspective, even economic concerns are driven by fear of immigration: it's just the same old "immigrants are taking my jobs but also somehow not growing the economy so I am now economically displaced" trope.
Britons do not, actually, wish to carpet their entire island w/ semidetached housing, so each and every immigrant occupying a flat is one less that a native could be living in.
It works as long as you have an economy and eyes to see it worked with her policies in place and didn't work before she was elected.
The Tories benefited massively from Thatcher because her policies massively benefited Britain. Without them, Britain would be far poorer today. Britain's problems today are not because of too much Thatcherism but because of far too little. The areas of greatest concern are those areas that they didn't manage to do much with, like local planning.
The idea of the market building housing only works if the market is allowed to do so. It isn't. That isn't a problem with the idea of the market building houses - it manages to do everything else in the economy just fine - but with planning laws.
Thatcherism is shortermism manifest. It's the same attitude that plagues the corporate world - focusing on next Quarter profits rather than the next 20 years. It leaves nothing left at the end but a broken state and more billionaires than we ever had medieval kings, while the rest of us slide back into Dickensian poverty, be you doctor, engineer, soldier, or social worker. We traded state wealth (sold off massive amounts of passive income generating assets like housing and utilities) for short term economic GDP growth in the 90s and early 00s, and now we brunt the cost of it because our passive income has gone. The Tories were more worried about re-election than they were keeping the middle class alive.
Our utilities and infrastructure are now drain us for every penny we're worth, and guess what? They're largely owned by other countries now. Our train networks, our energy companies, our communications, and so on, go to pay the French/Chinese/Scandinavian/etc government's. Somehow other countries manage to make profit on state asset; something which Thatcher never had the capacity to do. That's not considering the private industry, which makes £MM in profit, pocketing it instead of reinvesting it in the state which is the primary mandate of public ownership. Individuals abroad or in the 0.1% profit make money from our state, while the rest of the country withers.
The article is about how bad land and energy policies (essentially central planning)—dating from the post-war period—are holding back the British economy. Is that neoliberalism?
In fairness, whilst the article isn't without merit, it's authored by some of the only people in the UK that actually describe themselves as neoliberal. Which is why it's focusing on "green belt" planning policy and ignoring the fact that local government built 150k houses per annum back when we actually built enough houses, something which "neoliberal" policy introduced by Thatcher essentially made impossible, and why the article treats rail privatization as a success story rather than a service British citizens use in increasing numbers despite sky-high prices (and the government subsidising it more than when they owned it!) not least because markets have moved the jobs into London and the affordable housing out of London.
It is, neoliberalism has been about taking away all the state owned assets and putting everything the country needs into private hands. This is what has stalled the economy and its what is fuelling enormous inequality. Calling for ever more of it falls really flat now after 40 years of the same strategy making things worse for the average person.
Neoliberalism is basically the economic equivalent of "allelopathic medicine" - it is a word used mostly by kooks who are out of the mainstream for damned good reasons.
